gavin

Gavin Bailey   Task 7 

Thou shall not advertise…

The role of advertising

Advertising is an essential part of the marketing process. Having designed the product or service for a particular market, got the price right and distribution set up, the promotion or advertising must be done.

It is not simply telling the customer about what you are offering, it is about grabbing their attention and making them want it.

The ethics of advertising

In order to get peoples attention, advertising must stand out from the mundane everyday stream of information we are all subjected to on a daily basis. This means that people who devise advertising campaigns or design advertising materials must sometimes tread a fine line between the shocking and the offensive.

According to Advertising Standards Authority, “the main principles of the advertising standards codes are that ads should not mislead, cause harm, or offend”.

The fact that advertising can not only offend but cause harm underlines how powerful it can be. But, if we think about the advertising which makes the greatest impact upon us and sticks in our minds for longest, it is often that which pushes the boundaries of acceptability. 

One company which was considered to push the boundaries is benneton. Examples of imagery used by this company includes: Three bloody human hearts with the words black, white and yellow superimposed on them – an anti racist message in 1966, a priest and nun kissing in 1991, and in 1966 two horses copulating. These images are reproduced below.

Good and bad advertising

Good advertising, if it fulfills its purpose, must be advertising which meets the objective of the advertiser. This usually means that the sales targets are met or exceeded.  Most advertising is aimed at a particular target group, a subset of the population for whom the product or service was designed and who are the most likely to purchase it.  

However, in order to grab the attention of a particular target group, advertising can and does offend other groups for whom the advertising may not be intended.

It is therefore necessary to take care when advertising in a media form which is accessed routinely by not targeted groups.

Bad advertising, on the other hand, is advertising which does not meet the objectives of the organization which commissioned it. This mainly means that the product or service is not purchased in sufficient quantities to make it profitable.

First Things First a manifesto

First published in January 1964, Ken Garland’s manifesto proclaimed that the talent’s of designers were wasted on the “trivial pursuits” of advertising and that other thing were more worth using our skill and experience on, such as signs for streets and buildings, instruction manuals and a whole host of other, more worthy, applications.

In 2000 Ken Garland renewed his campaign to change the priorities of society away from design consumerism towards more worthwhile uses.

He proposed “a mindshift  away from product marketing
and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning”. By this he meant using the visual languages and resources of design for such things as

social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools

and charitable causes. 

However, designers must make ends meet and need to be paid. The sad fact is that consumerism, however trivial, pays our wages and such things as “charitable causes” usually do not. 

The best compromise must be to benefit worthy causes whilst at the same time promoting commercial products. Benneton was one of the few companies that shocked people into awareness with brutal images of torture, poverty and social injustice whilst at the same time promoting its company name and therefore its products. People are more likely to purchase products from a company they believe to be socially responsible.